Hello, everyone! Here's the final update for the Edge of the Empire beta.

AF fixed.

Thank. God.

-WJL

Thanks for the final update!

I was wondering if it would be possible, at some point of time, to get the Final Update pdf in a black font version, i.e without the red fonts of the latest changes?

I am hoping (as I am sure others are) to print that final update, and patiently glue in in the beta book all changes, so that the beta book is fully and easily playable (and a nice addition to the upcoming beginner's box), until the core book comes out.

Thanks in advance
Cheers
Ceodryn

Ceodryn said:

+1

I think I too could benefit from the effort.

I still preferred the challenge die version of auto-fire - but hey I can house-rule it

Nice job on the spread barrel - I assume that it means this provides a default blast 4 to a weapon - which can be modified to a total of 7, which is pretty beard.

Jegergryte said:

That's my reading of it.

As for the other updates, nice to see the vibro-weapons getting a bit of love, particularly the vibro-knife, making it a much superior weapon to the combat knife. Also liking the changes to Bodyguard and Toughened as well as the "avoid death" ability of Nemesis-tier NPCs.

Ceodryn said:

Good suggestion, though I imagine the devs have probably got bigger fish to fry at the moment. Still, count me as a +1.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Oh $h!t, I didn't even see the vibro weapon CR changes (not sure why the sword is in red, it was CR 2 already). These are definitely a 'new breed' now, they provide a distinct advantage and alternative play-style to the ranged weapons. Well done!

Provided we don't figure out a way to screw it up…

-WJL

LethalDose said:

We usually do… don't we?

Overalll, Im very pleased with all the changes. It started as a very good product and I think that it now as the potential to be a blockbuster. Best of luck to all the team and again, thank you for letting us be a small part of this great adventure.

These changes are indeed awesome. I can't wait to print them out and see how they do in actual play. I'd like to thank the developers that allowed this open play-test to be possible, it's great to know that our opinions and ideas had a direct impact on how the final product will look.

Very very nice! Vibro-weapons are now sick.

I'd like to point out a typo though…

Page 13: "The default reward is 15 XP for one session consisting of one to three major encounters and two to three minor encounters (note, these do not have to be combat encounters) is 15 XP ."

Ah, good catch. I'll make sure that doesn't make it into the final book "as is."

Thanks!

Hi,

I have a question about the following changes:

• Bounty Hunter (page 40): The Bounty Hunter loses Surveillance as a career skill and gains Brawl.
• Gadgeteer (page 42): The Gadgeteer loses Surveillance as a career skill and gains Coerce.
• Survivalist (page 43): The Survivalist loses Surveillance as a career skill and gains Medicine.

The Survivalist doesn't have Surveillance as a Bonus Career Skill (at least not in my book), and I am assuming it cannot be referring to Surveillance as a Career Skill since it fall under the Bounty Hunter changes.

If anyone could clarify, that'll be great. Thanks in advance!

Cheers
Ceodryn

Ceodryn said:

This got answered in a couple different places (including the Week 8 Update thread I believe), but for brevity's sake…

Survivalist should instead refer to the Scout specialization under the Explorer career. Survivalist has no change to it's listed career skills.

A lot of things about this game seem/are fun*, but my fears have been realized, and there just isn't any point in my group buying this game.

Specializations cost far too much. It's not about power gaming. It's about the set up of specializations not working for the types of characters we play. It's also about playing characters of various types that can actually fight, but that's a skill set up issue. Blaster pistols should be a skill for every single career.

The problem with the careers and specs in this game is that they are restricted in weird, counter intuitive, unexpected ways, and then have prohibitive costs associated with going around those restrictions.

Multi-specing in this game does not screw up the balance of the game. Mixing specs does not lead to characters that are more powerful than non mixed characters. There is literally no reason to hike up the cost. Further, having a fluctuating cost scale creates the same problem that multiclassed characters had in 3.5 DnD and it's derivitives when calculating skills. The math is complicated in ways that serve no good purpose. One has to take note of when one purchased each spec in order to simply double check their build math.

Basically, it's a system that feels in almost every way like it should have been truly "classless", but someone stubbornly refused to allow it.

No thank you.

This isn't a matter of not liking the style of game they're making, or it not being my sort of thing, etc. It's a matter of them screwing up their game. And now, for at least 5 years (if I remember the length of the license correctly) there won't be any new Star Wars RPG products worth purchasing for my group.

That's quite a bummer.

*Haven't played since around update 5 or 6, so there's some stuff I've not checked out first hand.

doctorbadwolf said:

Man, I remember when it was pretty much understood that every RPG needed some houseruling to fit a group's tastes.

Now I guess having to make a simple change in XP cost disqualifies an entire line from even reaching the table. Rough times here.

doctorbadwolf said:

Since you admit that you haven't played with the later updates, then you're missing the fact that costs of Specializations and skills were reduced. In the case of skills, they were returned to the original cost (5*new rank for career, 5*new rank + 5 for non-career). So, the cost of getting blasters to rank 5 from nothing is about 25xp different for the careers that have it versus the careers that don't. A whopping 2 game sessions difference at most.

Cost of the specs were introduced because the number of specs being limited was removed (originally limited to 3, now unlimited). The costs for new specs were also reduced in a later update.

Odd sentiments from mister doctor bad canine there I feel. I mean, certainly, one is entitled opinions and I haven't tested all the games out there, that would be nigh impossible with my schedule. I do agree that this system might have benefited from a career/class-less solution (some threads have ventured into such solutions and possibilities), but the restrictions that are put in place are neither too expensive - not according to my experience GMing the game at least and my players don't complain - nor "counter intuitive" from a role playing point of view. Although these arguments are subjective and not really "right" or "wrong" … although having all careers have ranged light combat skill would be counter intuitive - it makes little sense that every citizen in a galaxy be trained in combat skills. A note on this: skill levels means substantial amount of training and frequent use, not basic skill and knowledge. All skills can be used "untrained" (there is no "untrained" concept in this game as far as I know - not counting the use of lightsabers) by RAW, as far as I know, and as some threads have noted on, the actual possession of a rank does not really change the chances for success all that much, not until a high number of ranks - or substandard characteristics.

What I do react on is the bold, blunt and senseless accusation and wonderful statement that … and I quote: " t's a matter of them screwing up their game" … I'm not only perplexed or slightly offended, I'm completely taken aback by the silliness of such a statement. It implies some sort of "objectivity" and calls on some authority of the power of definition - rather than admitting that it does actually, contrary to the posters statements, come down to taste, style of play and other such subjective (and inter-subjective) notions of what is needed for a good gaming experience for said group. Whereas the latter is not really debatable, I mean taste and feelings are not really something to debate or seek any "truth" in when it comes deep down to it. The former statement, the one I quoted, is completely silly. Yes. This game could benefit from a multitude of different solutions, many of which no one has thought up yet. It could use some other system already in existence. This does not mean that they "screwed up their game", there is no complicated math for the generic person that completed school with (less than) average grades - addition and multiplications of 5 and 10 is not complicated by any stretch. I apologise if this latter statement sounds elitist , but as a social scientist engrossed in qualitative methods I have no knowledge about complicated maths and numbers at all, but 5s and 10s added or subtracted (or multiplied by 1, 2, 3 and so on) can only be considered complicated for the worst cases of dyscalculia, and I mean no offense by using the term and what it could implicate. I'm neither insinuating that anyone on these boards, the poster or anyone else, is suffering from this…

Furthermore I would only like to "second" Doc, The Weasel and Kallabeccas sentiments on house-rules and actually testing the game. My own experience has shown me that even the worst looking games can work perfectly if actually tested.

doctorbadwolf said:

If you can't actually FACT CHECK the system before you ditch… LOL. BYE!

I'm guessing we're better off without.

Jegergryte said:

Heck, people have been doing that to Palladium's in-house system for years, just to get something remotely playable

I've said this a thousand times before, but there's no such thing as a "universally perfect" RPG. Every GM that runs a game is going to make various tweaks to better suit their style of GM'ing.

DoctorBadWolf,
If you don't like how FFG has chosen to handle specializations and non-career skills (even after checking out the rest of the updates), then simply house-rule them to a format that works for you. You've got the original Beta book, and thanks to the way FFG did the updates, it's quite simple to go back to an earlier point and change as you feel is necessary. If the costs of new specializations really bugs you, then simply change them back to their earlier values.

Quite honestly, there are some aspects of the updates that I'm not thrilled with, but that's not stopping me from playing the game or adapting a (rather small) set of house rules to "patch" what I feel are the problem areas.

BTW, if you'd just prefer a quick overview of what's in the Updates past 5 and 6, check out the GSA article about them here:

gsa.thegamernation.org/2012/11/15/star-wars-edge-of-the-empire-is-the-game-still-the-same/

Doc, the Weasel said:

House rules should not be essential to play the game.

The only rule lacking for playability in Palladium is the rule describing how to read dice. It may not be fun, but it's definitely playable as written if one knows how to read the dice and use polyhedral dice. I've in fact run whole campaigns using Palladium Games' Fantasy and Robotech systems… which are in fact the same mechanics as rifts. Lots of stuff in the system I don't like, but it's playable as written.

Likewise, EOTE as written in the Beta book is quite playable. It has some suboptimal decisions.

First , the decision to use a class based system.

I can understand why they went with the class-based skill/trait acquisition, but in-play skill driven play. Houseruling around that is trivially simple… pick one of the following:
A) 12 career skills, 6 of them receiving 1 rank each
B) 11 career skills, 4 of them at one rank each, 1 at 2 ranks
C) 10 career skills, 2 at 2 ranks, 2 at 1 rank each.
1st 4 trait ranks cost 5 points each, and have to appear on any extant tree's 5 line.
2nd 4 trait ranks cost 10 points each, and have to appear on any extant tree's 5 or 10 line
3rd 4 trait ranks cost 15 points each, and have to appear on any extant tree's 5, 10 or 15 line.
etc.

In fact, that might make an excellent "optional rule" in the back of the book (And I'd be thrilled if it made it in.) The extant system creates archetypes that resonate with the setting and give an instant "in" to the intended styles of play. Fortunately, the system only makes class strongly valuable for trait acquisition; skill gains are only mildly impacted by not being in-class.

The second suboptimal decision in the beta is scaling. Not that it uses scales, but that it has too few. The setting includes vehicles from 1.5m to 15km long… and the simplicity of the scaling mechanic is nice, but doesn't match all the canon sources all that well. (Tho' Clone Wars may not be one that they really considered. In at least two episodes, I've seen clonetrooper carbines do damage to starfighter sized tanks… and tanks should be less fragile than starfighters of the same size.)

The third suboptimal decision is to not have operational costs and expected "normal" income for ships.

The fourth was to not have a good ratio of what a ships' cargo enc is, and relating it to the Extended Universe data already out there.

None of these are fatal flaws.

Seriously, all the decisions I've isolated as suboptimal are issues, but not ones that break the underlying system. The only truly major flaw isn't one for me - the custom dice. It's a high barrier for some people, including my wife, but in play, I have been convinced of the value in play.

And, once the big book is out, I'll be happy to houserule myself as needed… but the more houserules I need, the less likely I am to advocate for and/or use the system. (My general limit is 1 page of house rules. Possibly plus a 1/2 page list of canonical optional rules in force.) And my players tend to acquire rulebooks for systems they like when I run them.

Still wishing there was a bit more love for droids (as well as a better-explained mechanic for ionization weapons), but overall the rest of these changes seem like they make sense. Our group will try them out this weekend to see how they play.

Oh, and to the person who wanted a black-text version of the final changes, can't you just print it in grayscale? That's what I'm doing with my cut-and-pasting of the changes.

JoeLastowski said: